


To Seize the Darkness

by iberiandoctor (Jehane)



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: BDSM, Blindfolds, Caning, Cock & Ball Torture, Flogging, Gangbang, M/M, Manhandling, Multi, Noncon – Victim’s Weapons Are Used Against Him, Object Penetration, Rivette Suffers Prettily, Sexual Coercion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:42:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23538538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Rivette’s first thought, when he came around, was that the Chief was going to be absolutelylivid. With the criminals, with Jean Valjean, but most of all, with Rivette himself.
Relationships: Javert/Rivette, Jean Valjean & Rivette, Jean Valjean/Criminals, Rivette/Criminal(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30
Collections: Smut 4 Smut 2020





	To Seize the Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



Javert had been furious with Rivette for letting Thénardier escape from La Force, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Instead, Rivette’s colossal bungle had also somehow fuelled the Chief Inspector’s belief that there was a single mastermind behind all the crime in Paris — and that it was the fraudster who had evaded him in Montreuil, the criminal he’d been hunting for decades, the false victim behind the recent Gorbeau House debacle. 

_”Mark my words, wherever you find unrest, he will be at the very heart of it,”_ the Chief had said, grimly. When Rivette had reported that Thénardier had gotten away, Javert hadn’t even punished him; instead, he’d said, between his teeth, _“When we capture Jean Valjean, there can be no mistakes.”_

Rivette hadn’t questioned Javert’s instincts, unlikely as they seemed. Obediently, he’d sent more men into the streets to put up yet more wanted posters of Jean Valjean. But at the same time, someone had to look into the other issues of public order to which the Chief was turning a blind eye. 

Which was why Rivette had also had officers follow up on the reports of illegal arms factories in the Salpêtrière and the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, and the suspicious gatherings of workers' groups near the Place Martin. And he had seen fit to personally investigate the rumours that the Patron-Minette gang had been sighted in the vicinity of the Rue Plumet. 

This last wasn’t just a matter of redeeming himself in Javert’s eyes, of course. Any officer of the law would see it as their duty to try to recapture the criminal he’d allowed to abscond.

No. 55 had looked deserted when he arrived that afternoon, just before dusk. The front door was securely locked, but there was a suspiciously mis-aligned railing in the iron fence which he managed to squeeze through in order to climb into the garden, and he wouldn’t have been able to shoulder in the side door if its lock hadn’t already been prised loose. 

He’d proceeded cautiously into the seemingly abandoned house, pistol drawn, in case the place really was full of the criminals he was looking for. 

But he wasn’t at all expecting to see — sitting stiffly on an upholstered sofa in the middle of the salon — the very man whom the Chief had assured him would somehow be at the heart of Paris’ unrest. 

Rivette’s last thought, before the world went dark around him, was: _Bloody hell, the Chief may have been right after all._

*

Rivette woke, shivering, to find he’d been stripped of his uniform, blindfolded, and tied face-down to what he presumed was the dining room table.

His head was throbbing; he almost wished he hadn’t come around at all. The Chief was going to be absolutely _livid_.

Then again, angry as the Chief would be with him for letting himself get captured, it would be nothing compared with how furious Javert would be if Rivette managed to get himself _killed_. Rivette grimly resolved to do his utmost to get through this ordeal alive, for the Chief’s sake, if not for his own. 

However, he knew this would be no easy feat. Rivette had been a seasoned officer of the Paris Police for more than a decade, he’d seen enough action to be able to handle himself in a tight scrape. But this was unlike anything he’d experienced in the field, when focus and adrenaline and the reassuring proximity of his colleagues had left no room to be afraid.

Now, somehow, in seeking to recapture his quarry, he had blundered, alone and without back-up, into a den of wolves, and had been taken as a prisoner — blind, defenceless, and terrifyingly at their mercy.

Some distance away from him, his captors were speaking coarsely in the slang of the streets, not bothering to keep their voices down. Ever the policeman, Rivette strained to listen to the conversation and to try to discern how many of them there were.

Straight off, he recognised Thénardier’s braying voice, rising above the jeering of the other men. At first, Rivette thought the ruffian was speaking to him, but it soon became obvious that he was addressing someone else.

“So you say you’re not afraid of us. Burned your arm back in Gorbeau House to show us, our Babet and his cudgel haven’t made a dent on you. But there’s something that does frighten you, isn’t that right? If you tell us where the money is, we won’t harm that little girl of yours.” 

There was a brief pause, and then another voice spoke, weary with pain. Babet’s cudgel had obviously not convinced the speaker to give up the secrets of his wealth, but it sounded as if it had hurt him all the same.

“You’ll not lay a finger on her. You’ll never find her.”

Cursing his slowness, Rivette remembered the man he had seen sitting on the couch before he’d been knocked out. He’d recognised, in that broad face under the thatch of greying hair, the almost sensual features that had been replicated in the wanted posters hung across Paris. 

Perhaps Jean Valjean was not the criminal mastermind the Chief had believed him to be. In any event, even if he was involved with the criminal underworld somehow, he was now clearly as much its prisoner as Rivette himself. 

It sounded as if these conversations were taking place in the other part of the salon, some paces from where he lay. He sought to twist his head in that direction, trying to work the blindfold loose, but he was trussed up too securely — bent over the table, his stockinged feet bound to its legs and his wrists secured with rope passed beneath its surface. 

Thénardier continued, tauntingly, “You’d think so, but our Montparnasse is good at finding people. And someone as pretty as your little Cosette won’t be very hard to discover. She’ll be out in the dress shops on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, or walking in the Luxembourg Gardens, and our sly young gentleman will slip in behind her and slit her white throat, just as easy as you please.”

The man he knew to be Jean Valjean made a helpless noise, the sound a man might make if his daughter was threatened. “You’d never manage it. You can’t trick me that way.”

“We wouldn’t need to trick you at all, old man. We can keep you here for a long time, let Babet and Claquesous use you for target practice. After a while you’ll get so tired of the pain that you’d tell us what we want to know.”

This sounded horrific to Rivette’s ears, but Valjean merely let out a sigh. “I’ll never tell you. You might as well kill me now and save yourselves the trouble.”

More jeers rose in unison at this remark, and Thénardier said, harshly, “That’d be easy, wouldn’t it? But we won’t let you off so nice. You almost got us done, you stole my stepdaughter, now’s the time you pay up!”

For some reason, this proposition seemed to enrage Valjean. Raising his voice, he said, “I saved her from a lifetime of misery!” 

“She weren’t miserable, you lying old sod, she had to earn her keep,” Thénardier said, in a self-pitying manner that drew sympathy from no one, least of all Rivette. “Also, come off your high horse — you pretended to be a bourgeois when you’re really a dirty convict. Admit it, you stole all this money, like you stole my girl!”

Being unable to see made the ruffian’s taunts even more frightening. Pinned down and helpless, Rivette could only imagine the knot of scruffy, disreputable men gathering around Valjean on the sofa. The hackles rose on the back of Rivette’s neck, as Valjean shouted, heedless of the danger he was in: “Every sou of it was honestly made! From my factory in Montreuil! None of you ever did an honest day’s work in your entire life — aaah!” 

Valjean’s outrage broke off abruptly in a roar of pain as a razor-sharp noise sliced across the room. It was not a sound made by a cudgel; it sounded as if one of the other men had armed himself with a whip or a rod. 

Had they tied Valjean to the sofa, or to another piece of furniture on the far side of the salon? It was impossible to tell. Rivette tugged frantically on his bonds, trying to get himself free, but the ropes held him fast. He was forced to listen as the lash cracked down again and still again, as Valjean stifled helpless groans and as the man administering the flogging made panting, effortful noises. 

In the darkness, everything else seemed amplified: the stale smell of the blindfold, the chill air on his bare, clammy skin, the horrific sounds made by the abuser's weapon as it cut into helpless flesh. Grimly, Rivette counted five blows, and then six, before someone said, urgently, “Here, hold on, you’re really going to kill him!”

“Shut up, Babet, you’ve had your fun, now it’s my turn,” Thénardier panted. 

Another man remarked, unpleasantly, “His hide’s used to prison whips. Means we can hit ‘im harder.”

“If we kill him, we’ll never find out where the money is,” Babet, said, warningly, even as the flogging sounds started up once again. 

Valjean finally loosed a wet, muffled cry of agony, and Rivette knew he could not remain silent any longer. He couldn’t very well call himself a policeman if he stood by and permitted a citizen to be tortured to death by criminals, even if that citizen was really a fugitive from the prison hulks. Besides, the Chief would be apoplectic if, after all the time and effort spent to recapture Jean Valjean alive, Rivette allowed Valjean to get himself killed.

He cleared his dry throat, raised his head from the hard surface of the table, and called out as steadily as he could: “Here, why don’t you boys give it a rest? It won’t help you if you kill him or wear yourselves out in the attempt.”

There was a moment of surprised silence. Then Thénardier said, thoughtfully, “Explain to me how the cops managed to find us, again? Was it you, Brujon?”

“More likely it were your little Éponine,” Brujon retorted. “Or maybe the pig was passing by this morning, before Montparnasse remembered to close the window, and he came back to investigate?” The sound of heavy footsteps approached from across the room, and the man kicked Rivette viciously in the leg: “Anyway, you being here isn’t going to help you. Or him, either, come to that.”

Thénardier called over, “Careful. You searched him for weapons, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I searched him good and proper. Even took his clothes off, didn’t I, to make sure he didn’t have a spare pistol in his trouser pockets or a knife hidden in his boot? Took everything away, including this.” 

Something was rapped smartly against Rivette’s rear end, and Rivette realised to his growing horror that it was the top of his own cane, which Brujon must have taken away from him while he lay unconscious.

“You wanted us to give the bagnard a rest, didn’t you, Officer? Keen to taste a bit of punishment yourself, maybe?”

“Fuck off,” Rivette bit out, but it was too late. A blinding pain crashed across his backside, the thin cloth of his smallclothes offering scant protection against the familiar shaft of his police-issued weapon.

Rivette heard the shout tear from his throat; he struggled in vain against the ropes that bound him to the table. Sparks of bright agony shot across the darkness before his eyes. Again and again Brujon used his cane against him, striking it mercilessly across his buttocks and his back.

Rivette could not see the blows as they descended and had no warning before each hot flare of pain. Pressed blindly to the table’s surface, alone in the dark, there was nothing to distract him from his physical torment, no point of focus which he could cling to as he fought desperately to smother his cries. 

Despite everything, he was determined not to break down. He would not give these ruffians the satisfaction. Under the blindfold, he could just imagine the disappointed face Javert would have made if Rivette were to surrender at the first moment of torture.

Although, now that he thought about it, was this beating so much worse than the punishment the Chief himself meted out, on the rare occasion that such chastisement was warranted, by his own silver-topped cane? 

And hadn’t Rivette endured those reprimands stoically and with pride, as something of a badge of honour? As more than that, even — as a sign of Javert’s regard, which Rivette found himself imagining all too often when he touched himself at night?

“For God’s sake, that’s enough,” someone was saying. Jean Valjean sounded unexpectedly distressed at the sight of Rivette’s suffering.

The caning paused. As the agony from the welts across his rear end subsided into a dull throb, Rivette discovered something else was throbbing as well, trapped painfully against the wooden edge of the table. 

Somehow, his treacherous thoughts about the Chief had caused his tormented body to react in a way that he could not have expected.

The acrid taste of fear crawled up Rivette’s throat. He was dizzy from the pain, he could not for the life of him understand why he had become aroused in this sudden, terrible manner. Even worse, he knew he could not hide this condition from his captors for long, not in his present, pathetic state of undress.

True enough, his disgrace was revealed the instant his wrists were released from under the table and he was hauled to an upright position.

“Would you look at this,” said Brujon, into his ear. “Now we know why the pig was begging for a taste. Guelemer, here’s a present for us!”

Rivette belatedly understood that someone had been untying the ropes around his ankles. He tried to kick out as his feet came free, but he was quickly immobilized by the two men. They turned him briskly around, their breath and unwashed skin smelling sour at this close distance. Rivette wasn’t a small man, but the thugs were too strong for him; as one held him pinioned, the other reached down and palmed Rivette’s erection through his smallclothes, rubbing lasciviously first, and then squeezing so hard it brought tears to Rivette’s eyes.

“What d’you know. You pigs pretend to be so goody-good, but in the dark you’re as dirty as the rest of us.”

“Maybe that’s why the coppers are always so ready with the cane,” Babet called over, and Brujon said: “Right, then, let’s see what else we can do him for.”

“You bastards,” Rivette gasped, as the men heaved him onto the table, this time on his back, pressing his fresh welts agonisingly into the hard wooden surface.

Ignoring the pain, Rivette struggled and kicked, trying to pitch himself off the table, but the ruffians held him down, one at each side, pinning his arms above his head. 

As he continued to fight, he heard other men advancing. A low, insinuating voice remarked, “So, the officer likes pain, right? What d’you say we give him what he wants?”

Eager hands which Rivette couldn’t see grappled with his legs, and someone jerked down his underclothes, uncovering his hot, swollen shame. Despite the ill use, Rivette was still half-hard, and he felt his exposed balls twitch helplessly as they were prodded with something hard and blunt and impersonal.

“What a pretty weapon this is. Much nicer than a knock-me-down or a knife.” The owner of the insinuating voice leaned in, and drew sharp fingernails down Rivette’s enflamed foreskin. As Rivette tried to twist away, the man continued, slyly, “How about we take it away from him, like the rest of his weapons?”

“Not yet. Let’s have our fun first.” Babet’s voice, from very close by, and he swung his cudgel into Rivette’s balls. 

Rivette howled in pain. He felt himself arch off the table, extremity almost giving him the strength to throw off the foul-smelling thugs who held him down. 

“Ah, he didn’t like that! Maybe he’ll take to the cane better. Hand it over, Brujon.”

“My men will come for me,” Rivette panted, with a bravado he didn’t feel. He hoped that was the case, anyway. He was half-delirious with pain; he wasn’t sure he could endure this abuse for much longer, regardless of how disappointed Javert would be in him.

Babet snorted in derision. “A likely story, eh? You’d have come with back-up if you really suspected anything. Besides, if your people are truly on the way, we shouldn’t dally about — we should slit your throat and decamp post-haste.”

Rivette continued to struggle, stubbornly, though he knew this was unfortunately true. His life —and that of the other prisoner — depended on keeping these criminals entertained. The moment their appetite for cruelty was sated, the moment they tired of sporting with him …...

“Leave him alone,” Valjean said, urgently. Rivette twisted his head in the direction of that sympathetic voice. “You said it yourself, the officer just happened to stop by. He hasn’t seen your faces, you’ve no reason to harm him.”

“Shut your mouth,” Thénardier snapped. There was an indistinct shuffling around him, and Brujon said, in sulky tones, “It’s not going to work.”

“Of course it’ll work. We just need something to grease him up. Go see if there’s butter in the kitchen, you lazy sod.”

“I don’t see why it’s always me that sees to the supplies,” Brujon muttered as he stomped away. Rivette wasn’t sure what the criminals were planning, though Valjean could see it clearly enough: as Brujon returned, he made a wordless sound of dismay.

“They left some cooking fat,” Brujon remarked. “Smells like it’s gone off a bit, don’t it?”

“It’ll do,” Babet said, distractedly. There was a drawn-out pause, the men around him seeming to hold their breath, and then, without any warning at all, out of the darkness, something slick and cold and huge was shoved into Rivette’s arsehole.

Three years ago, Rivette had been stabbed in the shoulder by a man with a butcher’s knife. Five inches further down and the blade would have pierced his heart and put an end to his life. That pain, never entirely absent from him since, was a mere fraction of the agony that engulfed him now. 

His vision went a helpless, blinding white. He heard himself screaming, and felt his body go completely, helplessly limp. He was being rent in two, violated by his own weapon, in a way he never dreamed he would be, not even in his most furtive thoughts of the Chief.

It went on and on. As if from very far away, he heard the men, addressing him and each other. 

“What a sweet, round arse the pig has,” said one; “Not so hard, you idiot, you’ll get his blood all over me,” said another; yet another remarked, “Don’t worry, I’m just making sure he’s loosened up good and proper for all of us.”

“No!” Rivette hadn’t realised he had cried out, and then, with a wrench, he discovered he had not. The cry had come from Jean Valjean.

“Relax, old man. If you’re very good, you can have a go when we’re done with him.” 

Rivette moaned as the object was finally hauled from his damaged, bleeding hole. Darkness filled his vision again, threatening to overwhelm him. The thought of those criminals taking him now, one after the other, was too much. Far better for them to cut his throat and be done with it than for him to endure this next violation, and then to have to face the Chief and to report what had been done to him.

The Chief would be so angry — so disgusted — he’d never be able to look at Rivette in the same way again —

“No,” Valjean repeated. “Leave him alone. If you want to entertain yourselves, use me instead. I’m old, I have nothing to fear.”

Babet made a scoffing sound, and squeezed Rivette’s thigh. “Why would we want that? This piece of meat may not be the freshest, but it’s younger than you are.”

“Because,” Valjean murmured, “I’ve been in the bagne, I know all the tricks needed to please a man. Try me, Monsieur, you won’t regret it.”

“Ah, the old bagnard is gagging for it! Bring him over here, then, Claquesous, there’s a good fellow.”

“We’ll need help to move him,” remarked a sibilant voice Rivette hadn’t yet heard speak. “He nearly broke the couch, don’t forget how strong he is.”

“We need to tie him to something stronger than the couch,” Babet agreed, and abruptly, Rivette was heaved off the dining table and flung onto one of the nearby chairs. Sitting on the hard wood was agony; he was too weakened by pain to resist as his wrists were secured behind its back. There was the helpless taste of his own blood in his mouth. Dimly, he could hear Jean Valjean being conveyed from the other end of the room and taking Rivette’s place stoically on the table, which creaked under his weight.

“On his back. Make sure that’s tight enough.” A long pause, then, filled with the rough hiss of knots being tied and men grunting with effort, and finally, the stranger saying, “That’s better. That’s right.” 

Thénardier’s voice, triumphant: “Now, you’ll be good for us, won’t you? Or we’ll slit the officer’s throat, and fuck him to death as he bleeds out.”

“I told you I would let you,” Valjean said, resolutely. Blind and nauseous, Rivette struggled to comprehend the narrowness of his own escape from the gangsters, and why this surprising man had agreed to offer himself up in Rivette’s stead.

There was the sound of fabric ripping. To Rivette, listening in the darkness, it sounded as if Valjean’s clothes were being torn from his body by a pack of wolves. Around them rose the hungry noises of wild animals setting upon their prey.

“Use your mouth, you bastard!” 

“You said you had skills, show them to us!” 

“Wider, damn you!”

And then out of the dark came even hungrier noises — the mocking laughter, the growls and whines of Thénardier or whoever it was that had rushed ahead to claim pride of place, the sharp slap of flesh against flesh — and then the muffled sound of Valjean groaning.

“Would you look at the old man go,” murmured a voice in Rivette’s ear. Brujon had hung back, either to guard Rivette or to await his turn. “You’d think they taught cocksucking in the bagne!”

“No,” Rivette whispered. He couldn’t see what the thugs were doing to Valjean, but he didn’t have to. His ears were filled with the panting, piggish noises from the criminals, the creaking of the table from the see-sawing weight of the coupling bodies atop it, the terrible, unmistakable sounds of violation.

Brujon snorted. He leaned in, so close Rivette almost gagged on the smell of his rank sweat and the thick, pungent scent of his arousal, and took hold of Rivette’s abused member. 

“Are you feeling lonely?” he asked, mockingly. “Think you can get it up for me? If you can, maybe I’ll stay with you. Always fancied a bit of pig meat myself.”

Bile rose in Rivette’s throat as he imagined it, followed by an overwhelming sense of shame. If an ex-convict like Valjean could willingly take Rivette’s place, could allow himself to be so ill-used by these villains, surely Rivette could endure the attentions of one of their number. More, if it meant that this surrender might spare Valjean from additional suffering.

Rivette knew that he was limp and shrunken, utterly defeated by pain. He wanted nothing more than to recoil completely from Brujon’s rough clasp and curl up somewhere to die. Instead, he steeled himself to give his captor what he wanted.

In the darkness behind the blindfold, Rivette pictured Javert staring at him in disbelief. The Chief would have rather have slit his own throat than given this criminal the satisfaction. But self-destruction was not a choice Rivette could make under the circumstances, not with another’s life on the line as well.

 _Just doing my duty, Sir,_ he thought, and the conjured image of the Chief smiled his wry half-smile, the one he wore on the very rare occasions when he was satisfied with Rivette’s paperwork.

Calloused digits began to stroke him. Rivette imagined that they were the Chief’s strong, square fingers — the movements as deft and precise as they were when handling a pen or meting out a caning, as if moved by an instinctive understanding as to just how Rivette preferred to be touched.

The Chief made a pleased noise. Rivette knew his member was filling with blood, responding to Javert’s clever handling. He spread his thighs to give the Chief full access. 

Javert touched Rivette’s face under the blindfold, tracing the line of his cheekbones and then rubbing a thumb against his lips. _You reflect well on us all,_ Javert murmured, approvingly, as Rivette’s mouth parted for him. 

The illusion was broken when Brujon panted in his ear: “Knew you were a dirty fellow. Maybe we’ll keep you around after all! You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Rivette bit back a sob, as well as the automatic instinct to bite down hard. The Chief wasn’t here, and even if he was, he wouldn’t be looking at Rivette in such a comforting way. Most likely he wouldn’t ever bring himself to look at Rivette again.

Brujon chuckled, and started fumbling with the ropes circling Rivette’s wrists, presumably so he could be turned around and taken like a whore. Then the ruffian paused as the sound of cheering rose in the vicinity of the dining table. 

Babet, sounding half-drunk with pleasure: “What a good choice this was. The old man was right, the bagne taught him to ride like a champ.”

The others whooped and hollered, and the insinuating voice rang out, “Move it, Babet, you’re taking forever! Let someone else have a go!” 

Babet chuckled. “Such impatience. Do you think you can take the lad and me at once, old man? Shall we give it a try?”

“This I've got to see,” Brujon muttered, and he pushed himself off Rivette, leaving Rivette alone in the dark.

Valjean made a frantic high-pitched sound that Rivette had not heard him make before. He’d not heard anyone make it before: barely human, made by someone or something pushed past the limits of themselves.

Left unattended, Rivette took the opportunity to test his loosened bonds. Brujon had only started to undo the knots, but they had enough slack for Rivette to work with. At the same time, he rubbed the side of his face against the back of the chair and managed to shift the blindfold fractionally upward, leaving him at last free to peer beneath the cloth.

At first, his eyes had difficulty adjusting to their freedom; he could hardly focus. Night had fallen, swamping the room with almost as much darkness as there had been behind the blindfold. There were two small lamps, barely bright enough for him to make out the figures of Thénardier and long-haired Brujon standing on either side of the dining room table. A giant was kneeling on one end of the table, buck-naked from the waist down; heedless of his precarious position, he thrust himself into the unwilling mouth of their captive. On the other end, a thin man and dark one with dreadlocks were jostling for position, the one perched on top of the table, the other upright and holding their victim’s naked thighs apart at an almost-impossible angle as both of them fucked him together. 

Once again Rivette struggled with helplessness and outrage. His stomach churned. In his career he had arrested murderers and rapists and traitors to the crown, but this was the first time he had witnessed such inhumanity.

After the giant finished, he climbed off the creaking table and started to look for his trousers, and Rivette finally obtained an unobstructed view of Valjean’s suffering face.

Valjean’s hair was matted with sweat. A bruise purpled one cheek. His lips were puffy and bleeding, his swollen eyelids drooped half-shut. Disregarded tears had streaked his dirty face. Rope snaked around his naked body, his arms were bound underneath the table.

In the flickering light, Valjean’s eyes were glazed with pain, but he had managed to twist his head to the side, and now he squarely met Rivette’s horrified gaze.

It was inexplicable, this ex-convict surrendering up himself in an ultimate gesture of self-sacrifice. The Chief Inspector had described Valjean as a ruthless fraudster, a master criminal with no scruples or regard for the law — but there was none of that in evidence here, in this desperate act by one man to save another whom he had no reason to love.

As the dark man finished in his turn and scrambled off the table as well, leaving only the thin one in the possession of Valjean’s body, Brujon pushed himself forward.

“Hey, it’s my turn! Ah, he’s fainted —“ And, indeed, Valjean’s eyelids had slid closed, as the procession of assailants proved to be too much for any one man to withstand.

Thénardier said, sharply, “Get some water, we’ll bring him around. He can’t escape from us so easily.”

“Get water yourself,” Brujon said. “I’m always fetching the things, I haven’t had my go yet. Make Claquesous do it instead.”

“Where the devil _is_ Claquesous?” Thénardier muttered, which was when a hooting sound, made by someone badly impersonating an owl, could be heard distinctly from the garden. 

The men froze. “Is that him? Or could it be that wretched Éponine? Someone had better go see.” Thénardier glared at the giant, who was still laboriously lacing his boots, and the dread-locked man, who had more swiftly re-ordered his clothes; the latter jumped up, seized a knife, and went to investigate.

Now was the opportunity. Rivette pulled at his bonds with renewed vigour. 

Desperation gave him a burst of sudden strength. He felt the chair splintering, and managed to rip himself free.

Thénardier spun towards him, mouth opening in shock. Rivette shrugged off the ropes, seized the remnants of the chair, and heaved the wood up into his captor’s head.

Cursing, the three remaining thugs rushed over, trying to pull their clothing into place and arm themselves at the same time. Rivette struck one of them with the chair leg, and felt himself seized around the ribs. He planted his feet underneath him and slammed his head backwards against the chin of the man who held him. His assailant howled and let go. Rivette turned to follow up with an uppercut, when the third man placed him in a chokehold —

— and then the arm around his throat was knocked away, and Rivette could breathe again. He fell unceremoniously to his knees, the world tilting darkly around him.

“Rivette. _Rivette!_ ” 

A familiar voice was calling out his name. Hands gripped his shoulders, not ungently. When Rivette regained his senses again, he was looking up into the familiar face of Chief Inspector Javert.

Rivette tried to collect himself, though speech seemed to be beyond him for the moment. His sore, abused body was shivering as if gripped by fever; his head swam with overwhelming relief. 

Eventually, he managed, “How did you find me, sir?”

Javert frowned, as if he really wanted to shake his second-in-command, but had thought the better of it. “When you missed our end-of-shift debrief, I personally went through the open reports on your desk. Desmarais took one team to the munitions factory on the Rue de Cygne, and I came here.” 

“We knew we had the right place when we recognised this notorious gentleman standing with his knife in the garden,” he added, glancing off to one side, where the dark, dread-locked man was sitting sulkily in one of the chairs, handcuffs about his wrists.

Javert turned back to Rivette. “Are you hurt? Can you stand up?”

Underneath the impatient tone, was there a trace of real concern? To his horror, Rivette discovered he was humiliatingly close to tears.

“I’m fine, sir,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice steady. He did not know whether he could ever bring himself to speak of his ordeal to anyone, let alone to his impassive, infallible Chief Inspector. 

Javert raised him brusquely to his feet. If the Chief suspected anything about Rivette’s condition from his woeful state of undress or the welts on his bare bottom that the hem of his torn, dirty uniform shirt didn’t quite conceal, he kept his misgivings to himself.

Instead, he turned to glare around the room, and Rivette followed his gaze. One of the lamps had broken in the scuffle, the other cast its insufficient light across the salon. There were four bodies on the floor. Three were struggling and being held down by uniformed policemen, the fourth, Thénardier’s, was still, and Rivette was not above hoping the odious man was dead. 

Over in the shadows, on the far side of the room, Rivette could see the dining room table was empty. 

There was a stray coil of rope hanging from its surface, but otherwise there was no trace of the violation that had occurred there, or of the victim who had chosen to sacrifice himself in order to spare Rivette from the same fate.

“You dared to attack an officer of the law? You’ll all lose your heads for this!” Javert was shouting at the criminals, who responded with various sullen sounds of defeat. 

It was a hard-won moment of triumph, but Rivette could not even enjoy it. He knew that, sooner or later, he was duty-bound to report to the Chief that Valjean had once again escaped. 

He also knew he would have to find the words to describe the man’s inexplicable sacrifice, and to try to convince Javert that Jean Valjean might not be the irredeemable criminal mastermind that Javert believed him to be. 

_Utter nonsense,_ the Chief would likely say. _They kept you in the dark for so long that you can no longer see what’s in front of you._

But Rivette knew that he wasn’t the one who was blind. And though it might be futile to hope that Javert could be convinced to see the light at last, he also knew he owed it to Valjean to make the attempt.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kainosite for the beta and the Rue Plumet ground floor diagram <3
> 
> “It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the earth.” Les Miserables – Victor Hugo; _Chapter III. On What Conditions One can respect the Past_.
> 
> [Rue Plumet ground floor diagram](//imgur.com/a/5mMetIH) and [ salon interior, denoting side table as possible gangbang related venue ](//imgur.com/a/3pP05lx).


End file.
